


Go to Sleep You Little Baby

by Tonight_At_Noon



Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel, Marvel Cinematic Universe, Thor (Movies)
Genre: Babies, F/M, Fluff, Humor, Mild Sexual Content, Not Avengers: Infinity War Part 1 (Movie) Compliant, Romance, all that stuff did not happen, i don't know why, i've finally written a darcy/bucky story with a baby, it just sort of came out
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-06-14
Updated: 2018-06-14
Packaged: 2019-05-23 07:57:58
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,817
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14930297
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Tonight_At_Noon/pseuds/Tonight_At_Noon
Summary: Darcy loves Bucky, but she hates being pregnant.





	Go to Sleep You Little Baby

**Author's Note:**

> And my journey out of writer's block continues. Enjoy.
> 
> [Title is from the song "Didn't Leave Nobody but the Baby"]

Darcy Lewis never wanted children. They were noisy and expensive and they always seemed to smell bad, even when they were fresh out of the bath. They threw up on you and peed on you and kept you up at night with their cries for attention and unconditional love. And then they went ahead and grew into walking, talking, selfish, sarcastic teenagers. (She was sure they weren't all like that, but she was, and any child of hers was bound to turn out the same way.) And then they just . . . left. They went across states or sometimes continents to get away from you and the life you gave them through innumerable sacrifices, and once gone they never returned. (Again, some people stuck around in their home towns until they died, but Darcy abandoned her family at 18 and never looked back.)   
  
It just seemed like such a shitty deal. Here, give your entire life to raise this thing only to have it probably grow up to hate you and wish it had never been born in the first place. Darcy wanted no part of that. She was happy being childless, working hard to write her first book (nonfiction, of course—she wasn’t blessed with enough imagination for a novel) while also kicking ass as a writer for the _New York Times_. Hell, she was even happy being single. Men were trouble from what she could remember. Work was her husband _and_ her baby.  
  
Life was perfect. She was a praised journalist writing articles on hot topics and spending long nights with her friends at the bars around New York City. She ducked her head when the aliens came knocking, knowing that even if she had nothing to do with them anymore, the Avengers would be storming the city to help them in their time of crisis.  
  
So really, everything was coming up roses for Darcy Lewis. She was like Sting in that Police song: Seems I'm never lonely being alone.  
  
And then she met him. And then everything changed.  
  
It was right after an attack on the city. Her apartment building had been destroyed with her still inside and as she waited beneath the heavy cinder blocks, distracting herself with mentally composing an article for the paper tomorrow, the debris crushing her right leg was lifted away and there stood the man she knew to be Captain America's right-hand man.Which was good if she considered the fact that he technically didn't have a left hand that wasn't made of metal.  
  
His face scrunched as he continued lifting heavy pieces of building away from where she lay in silent agony. She couldn't help but think if he cut his hair, which at that point was down to his very broad shoulders, he would probably have an easier time rescuing people. He kept needing to pause in order to spit strands from his mouth or push it out of his Grecian ocean eyes. And maybe it was the blood loss (she didn't know at the time, but her crushed leg had also been sliced open and she was steadily bleeding out) but she felt as if this fallen demon, one of Lucifer's old henchmen, was her very own personal angel come to save her.  
  
"Can you move?" he had asked when most of the concrete and brick were out of the way.  
  
She nodded, though it was a complete lie. Trust her to almost kill herself to impress a former assassin.  
  
He held out a hand for her. She marvelled at just how many hands this one man seemed to have. Reaching for it, she grabbed ahold of his balmy, rough fingers and felt herself being lifted to her feet. The ground beneath her disappeared and for one glorious second she was flying among the stars with HYDRA's secret weapon.  
  
Then her knees buckled. Then she passed out into his strong arms. (Arm . . .)  
  
When she woke up she was surrounded by gifts. All of her friends had sent flowers and chocolates and teddy bears to her hospital room. Her leg was raised and wrapped in a vibrant purple cast. She didn't feel any pain, but that was probably due to the meds slipping and sliding through her bloodstream.

The doctors told her she was lucky to have been found. Her apartment was on the fourth floor of a twenty story building. Most of her neighbours were dead. The only reason she wasn't was due to the one-armed super soldier who got her out only because he somehow was able to hear her pathetic whines for help. (Whines Darcy was not aware she had been making. She had been under the impression she was a stoic and put-together victim of tragic circumstances.)   
  
One week of her life was spent in that hospital bed. It was torture. She could barely move thanks to the cast, and she needed assistance for the simplest tasks. Her time there was like limbo. A halfway point. The world outside didn't exist, or it at least didn't move. It and Darcy were sort of stuck. Paused. She wasted her days pretending she was a part of the Avengers team, wounded in action. Once her leg healed, she would be back on the streets, protecting the world from bad guys.  
  
On her second to last day, when her hair was really starting to show that it hadn't been properly washed in days and her skin was greasy and her clothes were sweaty, the day nurse came into her room and told her she had a visitor. She had been visited a lot by colleagues and friends during her stint in the hospital, so she wasn't inclined to turn whoever this happened to be away.

He walked into the room slowly as if he (powerful, godlike man that he was) was nervous. Unsure of himself. The first thing she noticed about him was how different he looked. He had tied his hair back in a bun, but unlike her most recent ex-boyfriend (who she had left over a year ago by this point) he looked more like a male model about to walk the runway than a homeless man attempting to fit in with the millennials. He wore regular clothes: dark jeans, a t-shirt, and a zip-up hoodie. Nothing like the leather ensemble he was sewn into when he pulled that building off of her. He had shaved as well which she found she preferred.  

She knew he was one hundred years old (way, way, way out of her league, and kind of disgusting if she thought too hard on it), but her heart stuttered as she stared at him standing awkwardly in her hospital room, the day nurse keeping watch from the doorway. 

“Could I have a moment?” he asked of Lillian, the nosey day nurse, and Darcy’s heart just about exploded. His voice was crisp and warm, like hot apple cider on a cool, autumn day. 

Lillian came to and backed out of the room, shutting the door behind her. 

Darcy Lewis was alone with her reformed rescuer. And she looked like shit. 

“Hey,” she said, her voice coming out scratchy and quiet. She cleared her throat and tried again. “Hey, um, thanks a lot for, you know, saving my life and all. They told me I'd have bled out and died if you hadn't gotten to me in time.”

He smiled and shook his head. Bashful. Beautiful. “You don’t need to thank me,” he said. “I heard you and I couldn’t very well leave you.”

No. She supposed he couldn’t very well leave her. That would somewhat go against his whole image of being the rehabilitated bad guy. Still . . .

“But still. Thank you. It’s like they say, you never realise how badly you want to live until you’re almost not alive anymore.”

“Do they really say that?” he asked, and that was it. 

_It_. Their beginning. (If one didn’t count their beginning as the moment he lifted that final building block off of her half-dead body.) Darcy Lewis was a true goner after that. Forget all of that “I’d be happy being single for the rest of my life” bullshit. 

Darcy Lewis would not be happy if this man, this ancient warrior, this aged Adonis, was not by her side for eternity. 

She was not a very lucky person (see: catching her father screwing her babysitter when she was seven; finding out her high school boyfriend was gay only after catching him screwing one of their fellow lifeguards at the pool after hours; meeting Jane Foster; being suck inside her apartment building when aliens decided it needed to be demolished), but someone must have been listening to her that day, because that wish (Which she did not, at the time, consider a wish. It was only upon reflection years later did she realise how much like a wish it sounded.) came true. 

“I’m Bucky,” he had said later on that day. 

“Darcy.”

“I know,” he said, smiling bashfully again. “I came to make sure you were alright.”

“I’m alright,” she said.

“Good,” he said.

“Good,” she said.

Hours whipped by with ease. She forgot to be horrified by her own appearance. The way Bucky Barnes was looking at her made her believe she was Aphrodite to his Adonis. He left only when Leila, the night nurse, announced visiting hours were over. He bid her goodnight, bowing out of the room like a nineteenth century gentleman, saying he hoped to see her again soon. 

Seconds after he shut the door, Darcy was out of the bed, hobbling down the deserted, darkened hallway, using her IV stand as a walking stick, whisper-shouting his name.

“Bucky!”

He turned, confused, and sped towards her, holding out his hands to steady her. He was laughing by this time. “What?” 

“Here,” she said, thrusting a piece of paper against his hard chest. He took it, observing its contents. “My number. Call me when you want to see me again.”

He left, promising to call tomorrow. 

He called the next day. As she was stepping inside her new apartment, its walls and floors bare, her phone rang out. It was an unknown number, but Darcy knew who it was. He said her name when she picked up. Not _hello_ or _it’s Bucky, that guy from the hospital_. Just her name, and she fell even further down that rabbit hole he was digging for her. 

They talked for hours like people did back in the 90s when texting wasn’t a thing. Before she hung up, he asked if he could see her again. The _yes_ zipped out of her mouth. No thinking required. 

He helped her move in to her new place. Then he took her out to lunch. Then she took him out to dinner (Bucky Barnes, welcome to the 21st century). Then he kissed her, and she kissed him back, and his lips tasted like beer and a hundred years of sadness, and they found themselves in her apartment, on her bed, their clothes lying in a forgotten pile on the floor. 

It was all very quick. One minute she was subconsciously whining beneath the wreckage of her former apartment building and the next she was dating the artist formerly known as the Winter Soldier. Sharing her life story with him. Falling in love with him. Holding him as he cried on her shoulder. 

Darcy Lewis never wanted to get married, but when Bucky Barnes quietly got down on one knee in their shared apartment one year after he pulled her from the rubble and saved her life, opening a box and showing her the solitaire diamond he got from his grandmother before he left for Europe during the Second World War, talking about how much he loved her and how long he had been waiting to meet her, she said yes. Between the tears and the gasps, Darcy Lewis said yes. Without hesitation, without fear, Darcy Lewis said yes.

Two weeks later they were married at the courthouse. Like people did back when their beaus were readying themselves for battle. Steve Rogers was there as witness. They ran that night to Greece and spent seven nights pretending to be children of the gods.

“You are Adonis,” Darcy had said as she lay on the white sheets of their hotel room, the balcony doors open and delivering to them waves of sea air. The moon hung low and large outside, giving the room a white glow. “And I am Aphrodite,” she said. Bucky was standing at the end of the bed, as naked as the moon. “You are my mortal lover. Bow to me.”

“Do you know the story of Aphrodite and Adonis?” he asked, climbing on the bed. He crept towards her.

“Of course,” she scoffed. Her chest was ready to burst from excitement. The silver band around Bucky’s right ring finger kept catching fire. “Do you?”

“Of course.” 

It was funny, because he was the true god, the super soldier, and she the boring old human.

He was almost on top of her now. His hair, which he had cut for the wedding and was as neat and tidy as it was when he was first a soldier, slumped across his forehead. Reaching up, Darcy dusted the strands away. Bucky captured her left hand with his right, kissing her palm, the crook of her elbow, her shoulder. He reached her mouth and she forgot all about the game they had been playing. 

“Oh, I love you,” he moaned as they well and truly became one. His face was pressed against her neck.

Darcy turned her head and kissed his lips. “I love you,” she said. 

Darcy Lewis never wanted children, but one year after their Grecian honeymoon, Darcy Lewis buried her packet of the pill and tossed out the box of condoms that always inhabited the bottom drawer of the table that sat beside the bed she shared with Bucky. 

The doctors weren’t sure it would work. After all, her husband was a century old even if he didn’t look a day older than 35. After all, he had been injected with a serum that entirely changed his body’s chemistry. After all, he had been brainwashed and tortured and used for decades by an evil organisation bent on destroying the world for their own sick pleasure. But they couldn’t give a definitive answer either way, so Darcy and Bucky kept trying.

She never wanted children, but one month after those pills got stashed away and those condoms got thrown out, Darcy Lewis was at the doctor and the doctor told her was already six weeks pregnant. There must have been a double malfunction. 

She cried. Then she called Bucky and he cried with her. 

That was months and months and months ago. She was young and naive then. Today, six weeks to her due date, Darcy Lewis woke up in her dark bedroom, Bucky Barnes nowhere in sight, to an aching pain in her lower back. Curled on her side, blind to the world as her eyes continued to adjust, she frowned. The window nearest the bed was glowing with moonlight and as Darcy began taking in the brick wall decorated with posters Bucky had picked out from her teenage collection (Backstreet Boys, Fight Club, Harry Potter - that kind of thing), her back spasmed again. The spasm reached her belly. Everything inside of her tightened for a few moments. She touched her protrusion with the tips of her fingers. Inside, her baby moved. 

When she first got pregnant and it was around the time she was supposed to feel the baby, she didn’t. The lack of movement scared her enough that she called her doctor and made an appointment. She was sure her child, her and Bucky’s child, was gone before she even got a chance to say hello. It was funny, because she had never been a worrier before she got pregnant, but she could tell that was all in the past from the moment she scheduled that check up. This was to be a pregnancy of anxiety and stress that was in no way good for the baby. 

And all of her initial worrying was pointless. (An unfortunate theme for Darcy.) The doctor told her she had been feeling the baby moving for a few days. What Darcy had considered near-constant gastrointestinal upset was actually a series of gentle kicks from her child. 

Steadily, those gentle kicks grew, transforming into painful kidney shots. Bucky, whenever he was around, would happily rest both of his hands on her large stomach when he saw her face contort in pain. He would sit there patiently waiting for a fresh graze. And she couldn't tell him to stop, even when he started absently tightening his hold with his metal hand. 

His face when the baby finally (finally) nudged his right palm was enough to make Darcy burst into hormonal tears. (Another unfortunate theme of the pregnancy.) Bucky’s subsequent tears were not hormonal, but they only spurred hers on.

All of those kicks and punches and elbows and knees to her insides had been painful. Uncomfortable. They were sometimes bad enough that they woke her up whenever she was lucky enough to fall asleep. She didn't like to admit it (she didn't like to admit a lot about this pregnancy), but she hated all of the assaults. Sure, at first they were sweet and she was too elated her baby was alive and fighting to mind, but after she had been socked right behind the belly button (which was strangely the most, _the_ _most_ , painful) several times in a row, the allure and awe slipped away. More often than not, she spent time wishing she could have that magician guy working with the Avengers cast some spell and remove the baby that way.

The movement she felt now, with six longs weeks to go, was different. Somehow, it was impatient and lethargic at the same time. Slow, but done with a purpose. 

Another spasm journeyed from her lower back to her stomach. 

Realisation (and shock and horror) dawned on Darcy. She was going into labour. She was going into labour while Bucky was off galavanting with every other superhero in the whole wide world. She was going into labour at three o’clock in the morning, six weeks until her due date. 

Panic riding in her blood, Darcy heaved herself off of the bed. She wobbled on her feet. Swayed this way and that. When she got her balance, she waddled towards the light switch and bathed the room in yellow light from the ceiling fan above the king sized bed that just barely fit in her and Bucky’s room. She paced for a few minutes (as much as she could pace when the only comfortable walking position was something Bucky had so sweetly dubbed _the penguin_ ), running one hand through her thickened hair (pregnancy changed the fucking texture of her, a weird side effect for which she had not been prepared) and using the other to stroke the underside of her belly. Maybe she could lull the baby back to sleep? 

She walked like Dick Van Dyke across the creaking floorboards for five minutes. In that time, she felt two more spasms. They were weak and fleeting, but two in five minutes was cause for concern. 

In her head, she kept that playing that episode of _The Office_ when Pam went into labour. One second she was waiting patiently for the contractions to get closer together, the next she was almost to the point of having baby Cecelia on the floor of the break room. 

She was busy distracting herself with funny lines from the show when it happened. _It_. The beginning. The proper beginning. Something within her (she would later learn it was called amniotic sac) burst open. Warm liquid spilled from beneath the old t-shirt of Bucky’s she had taken to wearing at night and splashed onto the wooden floor. 

Shit. 

Fuck.

This was all wrong. All of it. Everything seemed to be happening out of order, though she knew every pregnancy and delivery was different. 

But it was all wrong. She was six weeks to her due date. Bucky was upstate with the other Avengers for some stupid training she was sure none of them fucking needed. They hadn't even settled on options for names yet. 

Calm. She needed to remain calm and keep her blood pressure down. It wasn't good for the baby if she was all panicked. Sucking in random deep breaths, Darcy waddled as quickly as she could to the open room just outside the bedroom. She raced towards the kitchen, the cool tile a nice change to the hot wood on the soles of her feet, and grabbed her phone, dialling Bucky’s number from muscle memory. As it rang, her stomach clenched again. More liquid dripped to the floor. 

“Darcy? What's wrong?” Bucky’s voice was thick with sleep and concern.

“The baby's coming.” Darcy's voice shook with tears and terror. 

“What?” 

She nodded, bouncing from one foot to the other, trying to relieve some of the pressure building inside of her. “It's coming right now my water broke I'm having contractions they're really close together.” Her words fell out in one long stream. The breathing exercises were not working. She was freaking out. Spiralling. 

“I'm on my way,” Bucky said, and the fear and determination in the statement brought a fresh wave of tears to Darcy's already soaked eyes. She heard rustling on the other end. “You need to get to the hospital. Pack a bag and get there as soon as you can. Call ahead, make sure they know you're coming.”

This man had clearly thought this scenario through. 

Darcy left the kitchen as Bucky continued instructing her. She went to the small, green-walled nursery and speedily put things in a tote bag. Then she went to her room and filled the bag with more things. She wasn't paying attention to the objects and clothes she was placing inside. She was on autopilot, listening to every command given to her through the phone. 

“She's having the baby.” 

Darcy heard Bucky’s muffled voice. He must be telling Steve. 

“Oh my God,” came Steve’s reply. “I'll get you down there right now.”

“Steve's going to fly me down,” Bucky said. “I'll be there soon.”

“Yeah. I know. I'll call the hospital.”

“I love you.”

Darcy pressed herself against the wall of her closet. Closing her eyes, she said the words back. Then he was gone. 

Another spasm. 

 

*** * ***

 

“No,” she said, panting. Really panting, like a lioness suffering in the heat of the Savannah. Someone was dabbing her forehead with a cool cloth. Someone else was checking the beeping monitor next to the bed. Someone else knelt between her open thighs and told her it was time to push. “I can't. Not yet.”

She could. She wanted to, desperately. Every time her stomach cramped, the pressure between her legs built. But Bucky wasn't there yet. She couldn't push without him there.

Darcy's face bunched in pain and discomfort. There were several nurses in the room. All of them hailed from the NICU. When her baby was born, they were the ones who were going to steal the child away from her. 

“Darcy,” the doctor between her thighs said, “you need to push.”

Yes. She did. “I can't.”

“This baby needs you to push, Darcy.”

“I can't,” she groaned, tossing her head from side to side. She was getting tired. It was exhausting enough being in labour, but fighting against her body's natural instinct to clench everything and just fucking push was the real kicker. 

Outside the room, Darcy steadily became aware of a commotion. 

“She's in there?” someone asked, their voice oddly pitched. 

“Yes, sir. And she is getting everyone riled up.”

And then the door opened. And then Bucky was there, and it was like the first time they met all over again. She was buried underneath a layer of pain and he was there to strip it from her body. 

She smiled through the haze in her eyes as he strode to her bed. He grabbed for her hand. Kissed it several times. His mouth was soaked with his own supply of tears.

“I'm late,” he apologised. 

“I'm early,” she said. 

After Bucky appeared by her side the process sped up significantly. Within fifteen minutes the new parents, both sick with worry, heard the fresh, tiny cries of their tiny baby. 

Dizzy from pushing, Darcy lifted her head off of the pillow. 

“It's a girl!” the doctor exclaimed. 

Bucky cackled in her ear. He pressed his wet lips to her soaked forehead. Whispered _you did it_ in her ear. 

She did it. 

 

*** * ***

 

Four weeks. Their little girl (who really was very little) had to remain in the NICU for four long weeks. Her lungs didn't work right, the doctors said. Her fingernails weren't quite covering the tips of her fingers. 

Darcy and Bucky stood inside the ward. Their arms were wrapped around each other. They couldn't yet hold their baby, so they settled for holding one another. Two other sets of parents were here as well. One set were huddled next an incubator with a baby no longer than Darcy’s foot. 

They got lucky, then. Really. If she thought about it. 34 weeks wasn’t so bad in the grand scheme of things. 

“Sandra.”

Darcy screwed up her nose. She looked up at Bucky. “No.”

“You don't like any of my choices!” he whined softly.

“That's not true!” (It was very true.) “You just keep suggesting old people names.”

“I am old,” he reminded her.

Darcy returned her attention to the sleeping girl in front of them. “Maybe, but this is the 21st century and we no longer name our children _Sandra_.” 

Their baby was two days old and still had no name. The tag on her incubator lid read “Lewis-Barnes Baby.” 

“Why is your name first?” Bucky had asked, a sliver of his early twentieth century blood peaking through. 

“Because I'm the one that shoved this child out of my vagina. When you manage to do it, I'm sure your name will come before mine.”

But deciding on a first name was almost as trying as the delivery. They were nowhere near coming up with something they both liked. She was going to be the nameless child every kid made fun of at school.

Good ol’ No-Name.

“Well, give me something. You've only offered a couple of names and I don't think you were very sold on them,” Bucky said. “Name a teacher who you really admired.”

“Mr. Fleming,” she said automatically. “He was young, attractive, and very helpful whenever I needed his assistance.”

“Okay, not what I meant,” he said. “Out of curiosity, what is this Mr. Fleming doing nowadays?”

“Jealousy doesn't suit you, my dear,” she said, reaching back and patting his shoulder. “But I knew what you meant. Sally Nightingale. She was my ninth grade history teacher. She helped me fall in love with politics.”

Bucky rest his chin on the top of Darcy’s head. “And you give me shit about old names.”

But the next morning, the tag on the incubator read “Sally Lewis-Barnes.”

Darcy Lewis never wanted children. But then again, Darcy Lewis never planned on being stuck inside a collapsed building. Never planned on being rescued by Bucky Barnes. 

One month and two weeks after Sally’s premature entrance into the world, Darcy sat in the rocking chair in the nursery, her eyes swerving as Bucky danced around the room with their baby in his arms. Everyone was giggling, a lovely side effect of the sleepless nights from which they had been suffering. 

How could she have not wanted this? She was so full of happiness and contentedness she could burst. (Not unlike the amniotic sac that burst the night of Sally's birth.) 

Bucky’s Grecian blue eyes met hers. He was a changed man. He no longer woke in the middle of the night screaming. He no longer doubted himself so much. 

“What are you thinking about?” he asked.

Darcy shrugged and got to her feet, joining Bucky and Sally in the middle of the room. She wrapped her arms around Bucky’s stomach. Stroked Sally’s back until the girl smiled and giggled. 

“I'm just happy,” she said. “And so thankful you decided to pull me from that building.”

“It wasn't so much a decision. I was going to help you regardless.”

Darcy leaned up and pressed her lips to Bucky’s. “I know, I know.”

“You know, you know,” he mocked. Then, “Thank you.”

“For what?”

“Everything.”

“Oh,” she said, understanding. 

Darcy kissed him again. And he kissed her back. And they lived happily ever after. For the next two minutes before Sally was sick over the both of them.

**Author's Note:**

> Sally Nightingale. Any Doctor Who fans out there?


End file.
